Natural gardens

A week's holiday, seven days to explore our bush block near Heywood. Sounds like heaven doesn't it? Well, it rained! A lot. I haven't seen mud for a while, and I'd forgotten how, well, muddy it is. And I managed to get the little ATV bogged as well, and they're hard to bog.
So in effect I had a day and a half of lovely weather to search for fungi (more on those later) and other goodies, and then I was inside next to the lovely fire sewing, reading, drinking coffee, watching TV, adding tags to my photos so I can find them - so relaxing and welcome but not what I'd planned.
This little moss garden was growing on top of a stump. Fungi, moss, lichen and possibly a hornwort all growing in their own tiny ecosystem. Nature is truly marvellous. It's not very many weeks ago that this bit of bush was so parched and crackly you'd think it impossible that such a thing was possible. Just add water.

The only orchid I found flowering was the Nodding Greenhood, a common species but beautiful all the same. The leaves of a number of other species were evident, and if I was there next week the Tall Greenhoods would be flowering. I think the Tall Greenhoods are being split so I'm not sure which one grows in our bush. The only other plant flowering was the Epacris impressa.

Sporophytes

I'm going to have to get myself a moss book. This moss was growing in the wet forest in the Otways. The sporophytes, in this and all the mosses, are very attractive and varied, and the capsules as well. According to one reference I have the spore capsules shrink as they age and this causes the air inside to compress. Eventually the cap pops off and spores are fired up to two metres. That's impressive, but apparently this process produces an audible 'pop'. Now that's something I'd like to see and hear. Maybe I'll start a bog garden in the old aquarium packed away beneath the house.

This I think is a liverwort or a hornwort, but I know even less about these so that's all I'm saying.

Gold!

You've seen the Olympic athletes raise their hands in the air when they win an event. Well, yesterday I had my own "hands-in-the-air" event. I've finally photographed a Drosera whittakeri Scented Sundew.
Actually I've photographed them dozens of times but never successfully. They are very white, small, low to the ground and I've had trouble getting the exposure right or the depth of field right. And they flower best after a fire so normally the background is very dark so getting a metre reading can be tricky. Absolutely beautiful but very frustrating.
We found a small area in the forest near Anglesea that had been burnt recently and the black ground between the grasstrees was covered in the white-flowering sundews. I'd forgotten that their common name is Scented Sundew and didn't get down that low to smell them but I was on my hands and knees to photograph them. The light was good because it was an overcast day and I played around with the + and - settings to get a good depth of field. At home I was able to photoshop the shadows to lighten them a little. As you can see the leaves on this species of sundew are red and covered in dewy glands to trap insects.

And here are a couple more moss species that I found as well. Because it was a wet day the raindrops add a special beauty.

Gum Flat Road

A bunch of us went to the bush area behind Anglesea on the Great Ocean Road, to explore the heath and forest. It rained most of the day but we were able to find lots of evidence that spring is just around the corner. Many shrubs were just starting to flower or were in bud, orchid leaves everywhere and a few flowering. The Ironbarks were still flowering well and many had a mass of their flowers on the ground below because they'd been visited by parrots. Anglesea is one of my favourite places in this area - or maybe in the whole world actually.

We went to Gum Flat Road first and then via Bald Hills Road to the Distillery Picnic Ground. Unfortunately I had to leave after lunch so I couldn't visit the nearby Ironbark Gorge with the rest of the group.

There were a few reminders that it's still winter - fungi, mosses and liverworts.

Step over the cracks

I had to go back to the campus on a weekend. Even in a place of learning I would have felt very conspicuous on a week-day kneeling on a footpath to get a close-up photo of the moss Tortula muralis growing in the mortar between the bricks. The steps leading down to the computer lab are narrow and shaded and I would have been a major obstacle while I took photos of Bryum argentium that grows in the corner of each step. And Bryum torquescens grows really well on the brick wall outside the library. The normally quiet path around the lake had a visitor on Saturday, a student fishing, who must have wondered what I was doing - the tiny Grimmia pulvinata was spectacular in its sunny spot on the rock.

I'm used to seeing luxuriant moss in the forest but this is a different environment. Everywhere I look in the city I see moss. Some species of moss have adapted very well to city living. We've provided nooks and crannies, built our homes, pathways, headstones and factories out of granite, sandstone and limestone so the mosses feel quite at home. It amazes me to see moss growing on busy pathways, carparks, steps and walls, keeping its head down. So small that even when it sends up its sporophytes its barely noticeable. It amazes me that it can survive for long periods of heat and drought in such hostile environments and then flourish after the first rain.

I've read that moss it very susceptible to pollution so perhaps we should feel reassured as long as the moss is happy to be there – a bit like taking a canary down a mine to test the air. When I was a child we played the game of stepping over the cracks in a footpath because to step on one was bad luck. Bad luck for the moss maybe, but I never thought of that at the time.